Is it JUST a coincidence that I’m ALSO a cartoon rabbit?
I was travelling to a convention in Memphis when Hugh Hefner died, and didn’t get a chance to BUN TOON about it.
I’ve asked a number of people if they ALSO opened Playboys from the back, and have met only two people who said they did….and they were ALSO comic book artists. The whole “front or back opening controversy” was clearly a test.
I’m pretty sure I passed.
When I was in my early twenties, the FIRST places I ever sent samples of my work to, was Playboy and Mad magazine. I was rejected, and kept the rejection letters pinned over my desk for years.
I still have since worked for Mad Magazine a number of times, but never graced the pages of Playboy.
Something to shoot for.
Ty the Guy OUT!
For those of you not born a male cisgendered hetero cartoonist-in-training in the 60s, here’s what you missed:
The fantastic pin-up art of Alberto Vargas. Often MUCH better than the photo in the middle of the magazine.
B. Kliban- funniest cat cartoonist of an era.
The GORGEOUS paintings of Erich Sokol
The journeyman: Buck Brown
The always funny John Dempsey
The impossibly talented Doug Sneyd (it was hard to find one that was SFW, but you get the idea)
The casual skill of Phil Interlandi
The KING: Gahan Wilson.
The magnificent Jack Cole (creator of Plastic Man!)
Little Annie Fanny was created by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, with occasional help from Frank Frazetta, Jack Davis, Russ Heath, and whatever illustration genius was in the building with a brush.
Hefner himself started life as a cartoonist, and had he been more successful at it, he might never have founded a magazine that went out of his way to support the best and brightest of the field.
Hefner published the MUCH better version of Mad Magazine (called TRUMP), with the original gang of idiots. It was so good, it lasted a whole two issues. I have ’em both, and you can open Trump from either the front or the back, it doesn’t matter, there are no naked ladies cluttering up the front of the magazine.
this is the earliest version of the Playboy Rabbit. It can’t be a coincidence that I turned out to be a relative of some sort.
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Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 
Don’t forget the great French-arméniean cartoonist Edmond Kiraz.
I always started reading from the back for the cartoons. I loved Sokol and Snyed. After that was the centerfold and s look at the articles.
Vargas’s pinups always looked to me like beautifully rendered cadavers, next to George Petty’s which were just bursting with life and vitality. Nice survey; thx and best wishes as always to you and the family.
I didn’t discover Petty until much later in life. I always thought of Petty and Vargas as the Rockwell and Leyendecker of the Pin-Up. One striving for naturalism and the other letting the figure exaggerate and be lively…their respective styles are similar to their antecedents.
I think starting from the back is more of a being left-handed thing for me (though left-handers are more likely to be creative types).
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